So I just picked these up this morning: http://www.corsair.com/vengeance-2000-wireless-7-1-gaming-headset.html ($139.99 From my Local Microcenter, With a $20 Rebate, $119 for $160 headphones isn't bad). I'm moving from these: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Razer/Barracuda-HP1/ There are A LOT of reviews out there for these things, ALL of them positive, and to be honest, I can't disagree with any of them. I've been looking, for something like the last 4 years, for a good wireless headset with mic that did high def Stereo. Prior to earlier this year, that wish had always been a pipe dream (at least within my research) but I've always had my eye out. Yesterday, when doing some Minecraft searches for my son, I ran across an add for this headset and I was sold. I then went out and took a look at the reviews and that sold me even farther...I can't find 1 review that speaks Ill of these things. So, this morning I went down and shelled out my $140 + Tax and got them home this afternoon and connected. First: connection. This thing is a piece of cake to connect. Plug the USB connector in, plug the dongle into the extender (Use the extender, it'll increase your range with these things dramatically), and turn the headset on. Simple as that they were recognized and transmitting sound. (I did have to go into the sound control panel in windows and change the default device, but that probably won't apply to you...I have a set of creative Surround Sound 5.1 speakers, a Razer Barracuda Headset and these things all connected at this point...each device is providing a different sound source to Windows, so I've got several to switch between). Construction: These things are LARGE but not all that heavy. If you're not used to having a significantly sized piece of hardware resting on your head, these will likely take some getting used to. That said, the ear cups are VERY comfortable and with the 50mm drivers in the earpieces, the cups will support pretty much anyone's ears, unless you're dumbo or my dog. The cups are also fairly deep...meaning that the drivers/fabric doesn't sit up against your ears and press...a large problem with my Barracuda headset. The head strap is well padded and very comfortable. With a baseball cap on right now, I can easily feel the cups on my ears, but it's not uncomfortable, I can't even feel the headband. In the past, I've had a couple headsets that seemed to be built for Poindexter or someone with a more egg shaped head than I have...not these...I'm on the small size for heads and even I had to adjust the length of the ear pieces...I suspect that the headset could even be used by a kid (it may not fit my 8yo, but it would DEFINITELY fit my 11yo). The headset is made of some pretty sturdy materials. While it's not as "metal" as I'd like (most of it is plastic) it does have a VERY solid feel to it that doesn't suggest it'll break on you. The ear cups are spin-able to the 90 degree (flat to the desk) allowing some pretty easy storage in a drawer or some such. All in all, construction wise, they feel pretty comfortable, don't press on my ears and aren't any heavier than my previous gaming headset so all in all, I'd call these either just as good or better. Wireless: Probably not as strong as you might like, the listed 40' is probably pushing it to the very extent of it's range. My office (where I do all my gaming) is downstairs in a finished section of my unfinished basement (one story ranch style house). I can get sound anywhere within the basement (thought I did get dropouts for a second and some crackling at the far end of the basement). It's when I go up a floor that things start to go south pretty quickly. There may be a better placement for the dongle that will get me a better sound reception (it's currently behind both of my monitors on top of my 5.1 speaker box, so there may be some interference there). I can get to the main floor with some crackling but it will even out quickly. That said, if I get away from the stairwell (my office is directly below the stairwell) I get either crackling or complete dropout...the dongle just isn't pushing the power for the signal to push through the floor to the range as listed. I'm sure if my computer were upstairs I could probably get pretty far through the house without an issue, but these aren't going to give you the range to float throughout a 2 story house or a 1 story + basement with full range. If you need that, look elsewhere. Volume: WOW. Seriously, I've used wireless headsets before (I had an early plantronics Bluetooth as well as a Sennheiser non gaming set at work), and they usually suffer from the same fault...low volume. Oh, you can definitely push most of them to be painful to listen to, but you get a pretty tinny / distorted sound (the Sennheiser's I've got aren't bad...). This Vengeance headset has power to spare, and by that I mean I doubt you could get them past half way up in volume before you simply couldn't keep the phones on anymore...and you wouldn't hear a SMIDGEN of distortion either. Potentially this is a downfall of the headset for gaming: Game sounds are loud enough that they're fully overriding vent speak...When I was setting these things up this afternoon on Vent I had to ask a couple of our guys to repeat at a couple times. One time while I was in match I didn't hear a call over vent for me and couldn't understand a WORD that was being said. I'm sure there are vent settings I need to be changing on this but I've got game sound down to about 25% before I could accurately hear Vent...and that's on the equalizer setting that is supposed to enhance voices. Buttons/Configuration: Not much of ANYTHING to say here. Sound, On/Off and that's about it. If you're looking for gaming buttons, mute, etc. you're SOL here. The mic auto mutes when rolled into the "up" position, but you're not going to get a mute button or anything else on these things. Somewhat unfortunate since the chief competitor (Logitech) seems to have buttons all over their headset. KISS however says this isn't a bad thing. Sound: Night and day. When I first bought that Razer headset (2 - 3 Years ago), it was absolutely top of the line. Not sure what I paid for it but I'm pretty sure it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 - $250. I thought it's sound was awesome, a huge jump ahead of anything else I'd ever heard. Now, I can't rule out degradation over time of the speakers/sound (Do headsets/speakers degrade sound over time? I have no idea), but compared to this Vengeance headset, they sound like $10 wal-mart cheapies...their sound is muted and dry. Every sound on this new headset is rich, clear and huge. Might have to do with the fact that the Vengeance pushes sound out two single 50mm speakers vs. the 8 separate speakers in the Razar's that provide a true 5.1 surround in a headset...I have to assume that the single larger speakers in this headset make all the difference in sound. Whatever else, I can tell you that game sounds are MUCH more real with this headset. Large war machines rumble and crash giving you a feel of actually being in them, wind blows and has a SOUND like there's a chill in the air...you don't just hear the air move, you hear the CRISPNESS of it. Music is exquisite, with drivers that actually can punch some bass while not letting off on the mids or highs. By picking the proper presets on the equalizer (in a sec) you really can get it to punch the lows like a poor man's subwoofer...it's not as good as a real sound system, but it's the best headset I've had around my ears...and it's COMPLETELY WIRELESS. Mic: The mic is decent. It's on a "hard" plastic bar, so the only thing it's going to do is go up and down, it doesn't adjust to get closer to your mouth in any way. That said, according to those of you on Vent who helped me configure the thing, it doesn't need to. Just from default settings I was told that I was slightly to loud (not typically for most of my mic's on headsets), and clear. The mic sits a good fist+ away from your mouth, so it's not in the way of anything you might want to do. I guess if you want to stuff a rather large piece of pizza into your mouth, you'll want to move the mic up a few ticks or so, but otherwise, your mouth is pretty much completely clear of any obstruction. Again, this is a WIRELESS headset, no wires to interrupt movement, and the Mic is as good or better than any other headset (all wired) that I've tried. The only problem here is that there's no Mute, anytime you want to mute the mic, you're going to have to click it up to it's vertical position. The mic arm seems to be on a kind of "move and click" mechanism (kind of like the volume dial in a car though more pronounced). Each "tick" you move, the mic arm clicks into place and stays...it's unlikely that over time the mic will find it's way out of position in any way and the mechanism doesn't feel like it'll break any time soon either. Software: Interestingly enough, the software for the headset doesn't ship with the headset...has to be downloaded from Corsair. That said, the drivers are easy to get to and easy to find. The Dongle is auto-detected and auto-installed by windows when it's first plugged in and the entire headset can be turned on and played with without any driver installation. The drivers, then, install the equalizer and surround sound software. Read any of the other articles and they'll tell you that this headset is NOT true 7.1 Surround, it's emulated in software. As I've not had a good way to test the differences between emulated surround and real, I'm refraining from comment on it other than to say the sound of this headset has so far more than made up for any missing "surround" effects I've experienced. Surround is implemented by the installed software and thus, if you want anything CLOSE to surround from this headset, you'll have to install the software. The software control center is REALLY LIMITED in functionality. Like pretty much all of the headset, simple is the name of the game. From buttons to configuration options, there's just not that much to modify to get this thing working and setup...for those who love to have dials and buttons to press and twiddle with, this may be a drawback. For those who just want something to work, however, none of this is really bad news. You have a bypass button which turns off all software modification of the sound (Surround effects, Equilizer, etc.). You have the standard Mic and Speakers sound control level. You have an equalizer to modify sound levels (it can store custom sound level profiles) at the 30, 60, 120, 250, 500, 1K, 2K, 4K, 8K, and 16K levels. There are also 8 basic profiles including 4 different Audiophile Profiles, an MMO Profile (Maximizing mid sounds to help voices come through more clear), an FPS profile (not sure what it emphisizes but it's supposed to help make FPSish stuff clearer), a profile for watching movies and another "reference" profile (unknown). Finally, you have a "surround" section with option buttons to select one of Studio, Cinema or Hall...and that's all. Nothing more to it. If those settings don't fit for you, there's nothing much you can do about it. Battery: Finally a word about the battery. Most people are reporting 9 hours of time on a charge, the documentation says up to 10 hours so it's probably somewhere between 9 and 10. They can be used while plugged in and charging (you'll need an in computer USB slot for that, you can't hang these off an unpowered hub and expect them to charge properly), so if you hit low battery, you're not screwed. That said the charging chord (USB to Micro-USB) is only about a meter and a half long...CERTAINLY not large enough for you to plug into the back of your rig and string to the headset and have ANY mobility at all. Front USB port charging would almost be a requirement for these suckers if you expect to run them out of juice. The big bothersome thing for me is that the battery is NOT user replaceable (assumeably). It's a bloody wireless headset for Christ's sakes, why aren't the rechargeable batteries replaceable? Ok, so I'm spoiled by my Sennheisers which use 2 AAA Rechargeables, I just don't understand (other than intentionally bilking the customer) why you wouldn't want to have a user replacable set of batteries on a wireless device these days. While 9 hours of gaming is a pretty significant amount of time that's unlikely to cause problems for the majority of the gaming population, start getting that battery charge down into the 4 - 5 hour range and it starts becoming pretty interruptive to MOST gamers. Having to plug in your headset ever time you sit down to your computer turns these wireless headphones into wired headphones, NOT COOL. While corsair is suggesting that they will replace for a nominal fee, you're talking about having to ship them the headset and doing without for several days to weeks and paying for it...that can add up. 2 year warranty seems to me to be JUST long enough for the battery to really start losing charge. This said, Corsair did make a mistake with all this. Their initial user manual DOES SUGGEST that the internal battery pack is USER replaceable. There are even directions/instructions in the manual for doing so. One report I read states that there was a fear of breaking the headset and thus errating the manual to state that the battery is NOT replacable...still, the safety guide does show almost exactly how to get to and replace the battery pack (no identification of which ear the pack is in is the only missing information) so maybe this COULD be done by the user, saving the shipping costs...no idea what KIND of battery pack it uses however. Overall: Basically, this is the best Stereo headset I've ever had the pleasure of having over my ears. It's comfortable enough to wear for hours (I've had these things on for almost 3 hours at the time of this writing and have no wish to take them off), it's got a great feel, and awesome sound. Stereo wise, I can't imagine a better headset on the market...wired or wireless (particularly not at this price). Surround may leave something to be desired, I'll have to figure that out as I get into other games...still, I've got to say I've never heard any real 5.1 or 7.1 system through a pair of headphones that comes across right, 8 drivers in the headset or not it just doesn't work as well as having properly positioned speakers in a room. If you're in the market for a new gaming headset, this one is hard to beat, and the freedom of wireless combined with the sound of wired at this price point makes these really really compelling. --Doug
Thanks for the heads up. I am looking to replace my old Creative headset that is a little thrashed. EDIT --------- I do not have any local Microcenters, but Newegg has them for $139 also, with free shipping. Just no rebate. BestBuy is $149
Hi, i use one too and it is nice but ! It is missing 1 key feature: a button for push to talk Its no problem when you are at your keyboard but when you are talking with someone and want to go for a smoke an assignable button would be nice . Other than that this is a flawless product in my opinion And i dont regret having bought it. This one was my primary choice but its not available yet: http://www.nox-audio.com/Products/Admiral-Wireless-Surround-Headset-21
